Freedom Planet 2 announced

We don't seem to have mentioned Freedom Planet much on PC Gamer, but you probably already know that it's a Sonic-like platformer, and the Mega Drive-loving yin to Shovel Knight's very NES-y yang. It's a bit of a cult hit on that there Internet, and now a sequel has just been announced that aims to move beyond the limitations of a Mega Drive game.

"The original Freedom Planet was modeled as a tribute to Sega Genesis platform games," developer Stephen DiDuro says on the Freedom Planet 2 site. "We've learned what works and what doesn't, what's fun and what's frustrating, what we should expand on and what we can afford to lose. With all of this in mind, we feel that we are ready to bid farewell to nostalgia and create a sequel that will define Freedom Planet's identity as a franchise."

The first game's three heroines will return for the sequel, as will the two modes: Adventure and Classic, the latter letting players skip the surprisingly heavy (and fully voice-acted!) story element. Freedom Planet 2's characters will be drawn with more detail (as you can see in the mock screenshot above), while there'll be a new "flexible" difficulty system that allows you to change the difficulty mid-stage with the aid of special gold gems.

The first game was Kickstarted, but the (newly expanded) dev team currently have no plans for a Kickstarter this time. Their "goal is to have a complete beta version of the game ready by mid-2017 with the possibility of a public demo before then".